The Ava Gardner of the ketamine age: Lana Del Rey, at Leeds Festival, reviewed

As the American superstar starts singing another slow, sad, rather beautiful song, my mind begins to drift. I’m thinking that our appreciation of music is so much about the who, the when and perhaps most crucially the where; the significance of place is an under-examined element in our relationship with what we’re hearing at any given moment. I’m also thinking that a massive over-reliance on concert revenue to sustain artists’ livelihoods means that nowadays bigger is almost always seen as better – even when ‘bigger’ comes at the obvious detriment of the music. And I’m thinking that an act’s popularity – and indeed their excellence – isn’t necessarily proportionate to their ability to successfully perform at the top end of the bill at a major music festival.

These thoughts float around while watching Lana Del Rey sing in a field near Leeds. Del Rey, the alter ego of American singer-songwriter Elizabeth Grant, is one of the most interesting pop stars of the past decade or so. She channels the weird, cinematic America of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, a world of Hells Angels, sugar daddies, cult leaders, whacked-out ennui, endless romantic tragedy and good girls gone rogue. She is the Ava Gardner of the ketamine age. A dozen David Lynch films in sound. Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ made even sadder and stretched out for ever.

In her songs, a tranquillised Mansonic dread creeps over the Californian landscape like horror-movie smog. Most of the action takes place in the witching hours; when the sun is out, everything simply seems worse. It’s all done with knowing humour, drenched in degraded Hollywood glamour. Del Rey’s Glastonbury slot last year was cut short after she arrived on stage late because, she said, she was having her hair done, which seems a very Gardner thing to do (and say).